Way to go, Disney! Thank you for taking a (mostly) harmless fairy tale and infusing it with wickedly insidious stereotypes. Sure, we are all aware that this sort of thing has been taking place in Disney movies since their beginning, but times surely have changed, right?
Wrong! I took my daughter to see Tangled today. This was to be our special "Mommy and Me" activity. However, not five minutes into it I was questioning my choice of movies. The main antagonist in the movie is the only non-Caucasian in the whole film. She appears to be of gypsy stock with black, kinky curls. While our protagonist is a lovely young Miss with long, flowing, straight golden hair. To add insult to injury, the antagonist's name is Mother "Goth"el.
Yes, yes, I know that in the end, the Princess does have short brunette locks with an anachronistically "hip" hairstyle. However, let us not forget that at her most exceptional moment, when she was full of magick, she was sporting golden locks...
So, Disney, I must again Thank You for doing your worst and attempting to convince my ethnically diverse children, mothered by an old school goth, that all things dark must certainly be evil, and further ingraining the idea that all things good, pure, and magickal are blond....
I won't even get into the wretched anti-crone stereotypes that are represented here....
26 January 2011
17 January 2011
Pain in Mind
Once upon a time, I entered into a creative endeavor with the closest of my small circle of friends. I did so because for me, creating is the way I share myself, and doing this with another person is a way I express my deep love for them. Unfortunately, this endeavor did not go well, and it ended a close friendship in a dark and dreadful manner.
I have tried to examine my role in the demise of this friendship countless times, but I did not see it coming, nor did I ever have reason to think we were having troubles. Yes, it could be that I was blind and ignored important signs, but the way in which the situation was handled by her did not allow me any room to explore the problems that were created. She wrote me a letter "breaking up" with me, then proceeded to speak scathingly of me to many of our mutual friends. Granted, she may have been working through the situation and her feelings by talking to folks we both knew, but she said very harmful and hurtful things, and never once spoke to me directly.
The loss of a treasured friend can be devastating to anyone, and I definitely grieved for a great long while. I would feel a pit it my stomach when I thought of her. I dreamt about her. I gathered all of her belongings and tried to put them out of my home to keep the pain from returning unexpectedly. Honestly, it was like experiencing a death in the family.
I did reach out to her, after a time. I had had a particularly vivid dream about her and felt that perhaps it was time to make peace with the situation. As I thought of how horrible she had treated me, I thought perhaps I must have hurt her in unspeakable ways for her to have been so cruel. I wrote her a lengthy letter explaining my deepest regrets for the way things had ended between us and letter her know that she was important to me and that I was sorry for whatever I had done to cause such animosity.
She responded rather quickly to my letter, calling me a liar and questioning my integrity. If she held back anything, I could not tell. This response sealed the deal for me. I sealed up that part of my emotions and wrote her off in the process. Granted, we still had mutual friends, but we somehow never ran into each other after that... Until recently.
In the past year or so, we have been able to make a sort of peace. We have been at a couple of the same events and have avoided the awkwardness that one would expect. However, the hopes of a continued friendship have been carefully swept from my horizons. I have accepted this... honestly! It is our dear friend JC who has not.
JC is an amazing and wonderful girl. She sees the world in ways I do not, and her view is lovely. As far as friends go, she is of a rare breed. She is one of the truest, most loyal and loving people I know. I truly adore her, and she is loyal to both of us. As such, it pains her for the two of us not to be close and to share the bond the three of us had shared in the past. Since we found our peace with the situation, she has been trying to put us in the same places more often. I suppose she sees a glimmer of the past, and in it, hope. I just don't know how to tell her that the past can never be again. I can't open myself up to invest in that relationship again, and that the "ex" and I are not even the same people anymore.....
I have tried to examine my role in the demise of this friendship countless times, but I did not see it coming, nor did I ever have reason to think we were having troubles. Yes, it could be that I was blind and ignored important signs, but the way in which the situation was handled by her did not allow me any room to explore the problems that were created. She wrote me a letter "breaking up" with me, then proceeded to speak scathingly of me to many of our mutual friends. Granted, she may have been working through the situation and her feelings by talking to folks we both knew, but she said very harmful and hurtful things, and never once spoke to me directly.
The loss of a treasured friend can be devastating to anyone, and I definitely grieved for a great long while. I would feel a pit it my stomach when I thought of her. I dreamt about her. I gathered all of her belongings and tried to put them out of my home to keep the pain from returning unexpectedly. Honestly, it was like experiencing a death in the family.
I did reach out to her, after a time. I had had a particularly vivid dream about her and felt that perhaps it was time to make peace with the situation. As I thought of how horrible she had treated me, I thought perhaps I must have hurt her in unspeakable ways for her to have been so cruel. I wrote her a lengthy letter explaining my deepest regrets for the way things had ended between us and letter her know that she was important to me and that I was sorry for whatever I had done to cause such animosity.
She responded rather quickly to my letter, calling me a liar and questioning my integrity. If she held back anything, I could not tell. This response sealed the deal for me. I sealed up that part of my emotions and wrote her off in the process. Granted, we still had mutual friends, but we somehow never ran into each other after that... Until recently.
In the past year or so, we have been able to make a sort of peace. We have been at a couple of the same events and have avoided the awkwardness that one would expect. However, the hopes of a continued friendship have been carefully swept from my horizons. I have accepted this... honestly! It is our dear friend JC who has not.
JC is an amazing and wonderful girl. She sees the world in ways I do not, and her view is lovely. As far as friends go, she is of a rare breed. She is one of the truest, most loyal and loving people I know. I truly adore her, and she is loyal to both of us. As such, it pains her for the two of us not to be close and to share the bond the three of us had shared in the past. Since we found our peace with the situation, she has been trying to put us in the same places more often. I suppose she sees a glimmer of the past, and in it, hope. I just don't know how to tell her that the past can never be again. I can't open myself up to invest in that relationship again, and that the "ex" and I are not even the same people anymore.....
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